The morning of the next day, serene and beautiful as a bride decked in her fresh robes and redolent in her forest perfumery, came smiling over the wilderness hills of the east, to greet our little pioneer family on their deliverance from the perils of yesterday. The war of the elements, that had raged so fearfully round their seemingly devoted domicile, had all passed away; and, after sleeping off the fatigue and excitement of the previous day, they rose to look around them, to find themselves safe, and call themselves satisfied. Their buildings had been, after all, but very slightly injured, and their green crops but little damaged; their fences, indeed, were mostly consumed; but these could be replaced from the timber of the burnt slash, with little more labor than would be required to pile up and burn that timber where it lay. But, whatever such additional labor might be, it was more than compensated by the very intensity of the fire which caused it, and which, at the same time, had so utterly consumed all the underbrush, limbs of the trees, and even the smaller trees themselves, that weeks less than with ordinary burns would be required in the clearing. Elwood, therefore, came in from his morning survey happily disappointed in the supposed extent of his losses; and, joining his wife and son in the house, whom he found busily engaged in cutting up, mealing, and placing in the hissing pan over the fire the broad, red, and rich-looking pieces of trout, the fruit of yesterday’s excursion on the lake, he told them, with a gratified air, the result of his observation, which, on a merchant-like calculation of loss and gain from the conflagration, he made out to show even a balance in his favor. Mrs. Elwood rejoiced with her husband on the happy turn of affairs, and wondered why her son did not manifest the same flow of spirits. But the latter, for some reason or other, appeared unusually abstracted during the whole morning; and, when asked to relate the particulars of his perilous adventure with the moose, which he had the evening before but briefly mentioned, he exhibited a hesitation, and a sort of shying of the question, in that part of the adventure relating to the rescued girl, which did not escape the quick eye of the mother. It was evident to her that something was kept back. But what that something was she was wholly unable to conjecture. It was so unusual for her son to show any lack of frankness that the circumstance disturbed her, and, though she knew not exactly why, sent a boding chill over her heart, which caused her also to become thoughtful and silent. And Mr. Elwood, who possessed none of those mental sympathies which, in some, will often be found unconsciously mingling with the thoughts of others, so far, at least, as to apprise them of the general character and drift of those thoughts, now, in his turn, wondered why his wife, as well as son, should all at once become so unsocial and taciturn.